The July 24 appeal backed by Nvidia, Microsoft and Meta added SpaceX as Jensen Huang lobbied Sen. Mark Warner against premature U.S. restrictions on Chinese open-weight AI models.
A public letter titled “Open Weights and U.S. AI Leadership” expanded from 25 signatories on July 24 to 77, with SpaceX joining the list, as the Washington debate over open-weight and open-source AI models moved onto Capitol Hill. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang met Sen. Mark Warner, vice chair of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and Warner said Huang is “advocating strongly for open-source models” while they discussed jobs, national security and data centers. The industry push comes amid concern that Chinese models such as Moonshot AI’s Kimi K3, launched around July 17, could narrow the U.S. lead in AI and that restricting U.S. access to cheaper, openly available Chinese models could disadvantage American startups and researchers.